Friday, 24 October 2014

Plans are now well underway for our first event to be held
especially for those who have been bereaved by an asbestos disease. Last week, Joanne and Sarah visited the Doubletree
Hotel in Lincoln and
booked their hospitality suite for the 26th March. They also met with the branch chair and
secretary of the local Cruse Bereavement Care.
They will be sending some of their volunteers along to offer help and
support, and to tell those attending a bit about their services. This
event will be an opportunity for people to share experiences and talk to
someone else who “understands the journey”.
We hope that those attending will find companionship and moral
support. The event will be open to
anyone – not just widows – children, parents or close friends will be welcome
too.

This is just the beginning of what we hope will be a big
development in DAST’s services. Up until
now, we have only had the resources to support those actually suffering from
asbestos disease. However it has been
clear to us for sometime that loved ones need just as much support. Stage two of our lottery bid will be
submitted within the next couple of weeks.
If we are successful this will pay for a new worker to join us for 3
years to help set up a befriending scheme and a friends and relatives
forum. Keep everything crossed for our
success.

Sarah has been working on this bid as part of her remit to
diversify and develop our income. New
projects like this are needed to tap into funds from the Lottery and others,
because they always prefer to fund new work over existing services. This is
good in a way because it has made us look at what out service users need that
we are not already giving them. However,
it is an uphill struggle to fund funds for our day to day work. General running costs, such as telephone and electricity
bills in particular are hard to find grant funding for.

But in this respect we have had some good news this
week. Two separate charitable trusts
have donated a total of £1200 towards meeting the cost of our home visits in
the county of Northamptonshire. These visits are obviously the most expensive
for us, because of the distance that Natalie has to travel to get to them and
the time that they take. So we must say
a big thank you to the Maud Elkington Charitable Trust and the Earl Fitzwilliam
Charitable Trust for giving us much needed support in their area.

Tuesday, 7 October 2014

One of the nicest things about my job is reading
the letters and cards that come with the donation cheques. On many days our postbag contains some very
heartwarming messages, thanking us for our help and describing to us how our
work has made a difference to the sender and their family.

DAST get a lot of these cards and letters because we
offer such a personal service. As soon as
someone makes contact with us asking for help we arrange to go and visit them
within a matter of days. We take our service
into their own front room, no matter where they live. Even though we are based in Chesterfield, we
have pledged to personally visit anyone in the East Midlands area that needs
our help. That often means Natalie or
Paul being out for a full day visiting people as far afield as
Northamptonshire. On occasion, we have
even been asked to go to Norfolk or Cambridgeshire. And as soon as they return, they attack the
paperwork in order to get claims processed as soon as possible. They are available to advise and reassure
throughout this claim process. As
someone once said on one of our questionnaires:

“The people at DAST were a lifeline...they became
friends.”

The cost of delivering such a personal service is
high, which is why we are so grateful for the donations that people send to
us. We have received a lot of requests
for home visits in Lincolnshire in recent times. Each visit to Scunthorpe costs us in the
region of £135, while each visit to the Louth area costs us around £160. This
includes transport costs, worker time and administration.

So thank you to anyone who has ever donated to DAST
– it is you that keeps this service running and allowing us to throw out that
lifeline to people affected by asbestos.